The evaluation of gnathiid (Crustacea: Isopoda: Gnathidae) parasitism in goldblotch grouper (Epinephelus costae Staindahner, 1878) in the northeastern Mediterranean Sea using the self-organizing map (SOM).

The self-organizing map (SOM), which is widely used in economics and engineering applications, is a type of artificial neural network trained without supervision. SOM is used to represent multidimensional data in much lower dimensional spaces-usually in two dimensions (2D)-while preserving the topological properties of the input space. In this study, 2D maps were produced by using SOM to display the relationship between seasons, length, weight, and isopod infestation of goldblotch grouper (Epinephelus costae Staindahner, 1878). This is first study of gnathiid isopod praniza larvae infesting goldblotch grouper (E. costae Staindahner, 1878) in the northeast Mediterranean Sea (36°36' N-36°07' E, 35°52' N-36°25' E) in Iskenderun Bay. Fish were sampled monthly from Iskenderun Bay for a period of 12 months from 2006 May to 2007 April (Nt=331, Wt+/-SD (range)=392.92+/-72.76 g (169-927 g) TLt+/-SD (range)=30.85+/-3.88 cm)). Gnathia sp. was only extracted from the epithelium of the buccal cavity and internal side of the gills arch. The monthly patterns in infested fish samples (Np=109, Wp+/-SD (range)=349.25+/-182.79 g (169-853 g) TLt+/-SD (range)=26.05+/-12.68 cm (18.2-45.0 cm)) infestation rates (mean prevalence, P=28.12% (0-60) and mean intensity (MI+/-SD=23.69+/-14.78 (4-82), the relationship between length-weight and infested/non-infested fish were calculated. Although the gnathiid parasite high intensities were observed in fish, there was no significant effect on the growth and general health condition of infested fish.

A decision support system for preventing Legionella disease.

Information systems plays an important role in medicine because it helps process more data more efficiently while providing access to more people in different parts of the world. In this research we analyzed the data of legionella pneumophila and other legionella species collected by the public hygiene center (PHC). PHC collected 7,211 water samples from different sources of different locations in different cities in Turkey from year 1995 to 2008. The main goal of this research is to develop a conceptual framework for preventing disease and to design a medical decision support system to help administration assessing the risk of Legionnaires' disease and preventing the outbreaks of the disease. The DSS involves SOM software which was programmed with C# to search for patterns and similarities in data sets by producing SOM risk maps. Thus administrators can decide where to monitor cautiously to prevent the disease.